MCG Newsletter 26 01 Jan 2022

MIDWEST COMPUTER GENEALOGISTS

NEWSLETTER

www.mcgeneadlogists.org

Number 1

Volume XXVI

January, 2022

archived edition

RELEASE OF 1950 CENSUS

In April, the 1950 U.S. Census will be
released.Census records are not published until 72
years after the survey was taken.

“The U.S. Constitution requires only that the
decennial census be a population count. Since the
first census in 1790, however, the need for useful
information about the United States' population and
economy became increasingly evident.

The decennial census steadily expanded throughout
the nineteenth century. By the turn of the century,
the demographic, agricultural, and economic
segments of the decennial census collected
information on hundreds of topics. The work of
processing these data kept the temporary Census
Office open for almost all the decades following the
1880 and 1890 censuses.

Recognizing the growing complexity of the
decennial census, Congress enacted legislation
creating a permanent Census Office within the
Department of the Interior on March 6, 1902. On
July 1, 1902, the U.S. Census Bureau officially
"opened its doors" under the leadership of William
Rush Merriam.

In 1903, the Census Office was moved to the newly
created Department of Commerce and Labor. It
remained within Commerce when Commerce and
Labor split into separate departments in 1913.

For a summary history of the Census Bureau, see
Factfinder for the Nation: History and Organization
[PDF 159KB]. (https://www.census.gov).

The first U.S. Census was taken in 1790. Only the
head of family was listed, and members of the

family were listded by sex and approximate age. The
1850 Census was the first in which all members of
a family were listed by name. The 1880 Census was
the first to list the states or countries in which the
parents of individuals listed were included. Most of
the 1890 Census was destroyed in a fire.

Stephen P. Morse has prepared on his website
special tools for searching for our family members
in the U.S. Census before the names index is
created. “This article was written October 2019.
This article is based on a similar article for the 1940
census that appeared in the Association of
Professional Genealogists Quarterly (December
2011)".

“When the 1950 census is released in April 2022, it
will not have a name index. So finding people in the
census will involve searching by location instead.
Even when a name index becomes available, there
will still be many reasons for doing locational
searches.

The census is organized by Enumeration Districts
(EDs), so the location needs to be converted to an
ED before the census can be accessed. The One-Step
website (https://stevemorse.org) contains numerous
tools for obtaining EDs. This paper will present the
various tools and show circumstances in which each
can be used. Stephen P. Morse and Joel B.
Weintraub, “Getting Ready for the 1950 Census:
Searching With and Without a Name Index, . (The

One-Step website, (https://stevemorse.org)

“In the 19" Century, some _ states, such as Illinois,
Kansas, and Iowa, began taking state census records
five years after the Federal Census was taken. (1855,
1865, etc.)

THE PRESIDENT'S CORNER
Al Morse

Rich Hill, Bates County, Missouri was a village
established in 1868 because coal mines were being
developed in the area. Because of the mines, the
village was moved about 2 miles south. One of the
stories of how the town got its name was that
several men were standing on top of a coal mine.
They were trying to come up with a name for the
new town. One of the men said, “We are standing
on a rich hill”. So that was the name given to the
new town.

Land was donated, and plans were made to develop
the town. Plans were made for streets, parks, and the
downtown business area. The town was officially
founded on July 8, 1880. The first mayor was Dr.
William H. Allen. The town prospered and grew
dramatically fast because of the many coal mines
established in Bates County, especially around Rich
Hill.

Here are some quotes from early area newspapers
that appeared later in local newspapers. The column
was “Historical Happenings” by Eddie Herman.
“November 21, 1880 from the New York Trade
Journal: 'We presume few persons know where Rich
Hill, MO. Is located, or why it is so named. You
cannot find it in the atlases, as it's only five months
old, but it's a lively town that ships out 2,000 tons of
coal a day.””

Another says in November 1890: “In 1880, Rich
Hill's population was 36. Today it is 4007, an
increase of 3971 people.” In January, 1883: “In the
annual report

of Marshall L. Wolfe, Bates County Coal Mine
Inspector, there are 195 mines operating and 95,000
acres of workable coal lands. 90% of the coal
shipped out of Bates County is mined within 3 miles
of Rich Hill.”

The coal mines became mined out and the area
became a farming area. Many small towns that
popped up during the coal mining era vanished.
Rich Hill's population declined over the years. The

2010 census reported a population of 1396.

My father, Albert Frank Morse, was born and lived
all of his life in Bates County. My mother, Mildred
Catherine Janssens, was born in Parkville, Missouri.
Her family came to Bates County in 1917 when she
was 7 years old. She graduated from Rich Hill High
School in 1929. My parents were married in Rich
Hill on November 6, 1940. They made their home
there for the rest of their lives. Rich Hill had no
hospital, so Dr. Claude Allen had his patients go to
Fort Scott, Kansas for hospital stays, so I was born
in Fort Scott. I understand that Mom and I were
there about 2 weeks and then Dad brought us home
to their rented house in Rich Hill. Later that year, my
folks bought a two story house in Rich Hill. My
brother, Carl, was born in Nevada, Missouri. Carl
and I both attended all 12 years of school in the
same building, which I believe, was the same
building that our mother graduated from. My father
died in the hospital in Nevada on June 18, 1972. My
mother died in St. Joseph Hospital in Kansas City,
Missouri on March 18, 1982. They are buried in
Rich Hill's Greenlawn Cemetery.

Rich Hill has been known for years for its 4th of
July celebration. The first time it was celebrated was
in 1883. I can remember that, on Rich Hill's 75"
anniversary in 1955, the celebration was bigger than
normal. Dad grew a beard, and Carl and I had
special hats. In 1980, Rich Hill celebrated its 100"
anniversary. I was living in Independence, Missouri.
But Mom was still living at home in Rich Hill. We
went down to Rich Hill to celebrate. My wife,
Dorothy, and our sons came. The boys enjoyed the
carnival.

When Dorothy and I retired, we moved to 5 miles
west of Rich Hill and lived there for 10 years. We
became involved with some of the activities in Rich
Hill and enjoyed going to town for the 4th of July.
We were reacquainted with some friends and
enjoyed making new ones. I still enjoy driving
through the town. The downtown is hardly being
used, and many of the old two story buildings have
collapsed. However,the two parks are still used. The
circular park downtown is used for the 4th" of July
celebrations and other activities during the year. The

east park, only one block east of where I grew up, is
used for family reunions and other activities. Ihave
enjoyed doing some research on the town where I
grew up.

RECOMMENDED READING

"January 27, 2022: International Holocaust
Remembrance Day" By Jenny Ashcraft, Fold3
Blog -_ https://blog.fold3.com/january-27-2022-
international-holocaust-remembrance-day/

"100th Anniversary of the Tomb of the
Unknown Soldier: November 11, 2021" by
Jenny Ashcraft, Fold3 Blog
https://blog.fold3.com/100th-anniversary-of-the-
tomb-of-the-unknown-soldier-november-11-2021/

RESEARCHING THE U.S. Census

Marjorie Slavens

U.S.Census records have always been a very
important part of our genealogical research, but
these records have not always been easy to obtain.
Now, we can search various sites on the net to look
for these records; Ancestry.com, Genealogy.com,
and Familysearch.orghave provided much better
access on the net than what was available to us
when my mother, Mildred Welty Slavens, began
her family history research in the mid-1970s.

Mother lived in St. Louis when she began her family
research in the mid-1970s. She first worked at the
St. Louis Public Library, and their records were very
good for that time. She was able to access Census
records on microfilm at the Library, but there were
not many available microfilm readers, and both at
the Library and the Family History Centers, one
needed to sign up for limited periods of time to use
the equipment. When she visited my sister in Blue
Springs, she could also find books and microfilm at
the Mid-Continent Library on 24 Highway. We told
her she needed to move to the Kansas City area and

purchase a house near the library; she frequently had
difficulty leaving her research in the library while it
was still light enough for her to drive. In St. Louis,
she tried to take the bus because parking was
difficult in the downtown area, and she did not want
to have to keep going out to put money in the
meters.

At the St. Louis PublicLibrary, she began
researching her Welty family. She knew her
grandfather, Henry Welty, came to Jasper County,
Missouri from Ohio following the Civil War, but her
father, Edward Alonzo Welty, told her his father
came from Lancaster County, Ohio. There is no
Lancaster County; Lancaster is the county seat of
Fairfield County, which is southeast of Columbus.
The 1850 Census had been published with an index,
but she did not find her grandfather in that index.
There were many other Weltys in the state, but she
did not know how they were related to us. She
searched the 1850 microfilm, but she could not find
them. Her brother, Edward Charles Welty, ordered
a copy of the microfilm from the National Archives,
That copy was much better than the library copy,
and she finally found the family. Henry Welty was
born in 1837 on a farm near Bremen, a small town
near Lancaster. His father was John Welty, but his
mother, Mary Magdalene (Polly) Miller (1801-1844)
was no longer living in 1850.

We called Information for a phone number of
Weltys in Bremen, and one of the three listed was
John P. Welty. Mother wrote to him, but he had died
four years before that time. However, his wife,
Bessie Welty, answered her letter and invited us to
come to Bremen. We visited her in the summer of
1977, and she showed us a book on the Miller
family, which included John P. Welty’s family. We
discovered that his grandfather, Abraham Welty,
was the youngest brother of Mother’s great
grandfather, John Welty, the father of her
grandfather, Henry. John P. was the great grandson
of Barbara Miller Biery, the older sister of Henry
Welty’s mother, Mary Magdalene (Polly) Miller
Welty. In fact, the Miller book, published in 1912,
included her father, Edward Alonzo Welty and his
brothers and sisters. Without the better copy of the
1850 Ohio U.S. Census, we would not have been
able to make this contact. Because we made this

Bremen contact, we went to York County,
Pennsylvania and discovered the wills of Peter
Welty, our immigrant ancestor who came to this
country in 1727 from Germany, and his son, John
(Johannes) Welty, Sr. Son of Peter and great
grandfather of Henry Welty.

Once, when we were reviewing Census records at
the National Archives in Washington, D. C., Mother
encountered another microfilm that was not clear.
To solve the problem, they told her they could show
her the original book with the text in a special room
so she could read the original entry, and she found
the information for which she was looking.

After Mother moved to Blue Springs in 1990, she
visited the Mid-Continent Library two or three times
a week. She generally went to the library in mid-
afternoon because visitors from out of town were
beginning to prepare to leave, and microfilm readers
were much more available.

I gave Mother her first computer in 1996 for her 86"
birthday. I did not live here, and my sister worked,
so I gave her a Dummies book so she could learn to
use her new computer without much help. My sister
and I could answer questions but she had to work
diligently to know what questions to ask and to
learn to use the device. She began using the Internet
as soon as she could, and by the time we moved to
Foxwood Springs in 1998, she was one of our best
Foxwood Springs Internet users and did some of the
research for our Website Committee as we prepared
in 1999-2000 to create a residents’ site, which went
online in March, 2000.

Mother used Census records on both Ancestry.com
and Genealogy.com. Originally, the Ancestry
records were more complete, but the Genealogy
records were easier to read. On the net, she could
read the records and print them immediately without
additional cost. She occasionally helped another
Foxwood resident, who was helping friends prepare
their records for the S.A. R.

When she started her research, she knew who her
grandparents were. She did not meet Henry Welty,
but her grandmother, Catharine Mary Eppright
Welty, was born in 1848, and she and her family

were in Jasper County, Missouri in the 1850,
1860,1870, and 1880 Census records. Her maternal
grandfather, Charles Merlin Kerr, was born in 1863,
but she had his first wife’s family Bible, in which
she found records to trace his older 15 brothers and
sisters, finding most of them in Census records. She
never met her great grandmother, Elzina H. Heape
Kerr (1869-1895), but she was able to trace her
Heape and Tefertiller families from the 1850 to the
1920 Census where Ella’s mother, Derrinda
Tefertiller Heape died in 1922. The Kerrs lost
contact with the Heape family by the time Ella died
in New Mexico in 1895. Although Mother was 12
years old when her great grandmother died, she and
her mother, Hattie Lee Kerr Welty, did not know at
that time where the Heapes lived. Mother found this
information in the 1900, 1910, and 1920 Census
records.

The 1880 Census was especially helpful because it
was indexed by the Soundex, and some misspellings
could be corrected. The 1880 Census also included
the states or countries where the parents of people
included in the Census were born, improving the
tracing of families who did not come west before
that time.

We were not able to find our family in the 1940
Census; we were not in the index. For the Census, I
should be in the records for 9 different Census
records; I lived in 5 cities with 6 addresses when
those records were taken. I was probably in the 1960
Census in two places, Tallahassee, Florida, where I
was attending Florida State University, and at my
parents’ home in Missouri. My voting address was
still in Missouri, and my mother probably reported
me at that address, although the Florida Census taker
insisted that I should be counted in Florida. I will
probably never know the answer to the question of
whether I counted twice in the 1960 Census, which
will be published in 2032.

FURTHER READING ON OFFICERS:
THE 1850 CENSUS Al Morse, President
Marjorie Slavens, Newsletter Editor
Julia Morse, Website Administrator,

"Ancestry® to Apply Handwriting Librarian

Recognition Artificial Intelligence to Create a
Searchable Index of the 1950 U.S. Census" by
the Ancestry Team" https://www.ancestry.com/
corporate/blog/ancestry-apply-handwriting-
recognition-artificial-intelligence-create-
searchable-index-1950-us

"How Indexing the 1950 Census Will
Be Different" by Jason Wright, FamilySearch
Blog https://www.familysearch.org/en/blog/
indexing-1950-census

"Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About
the 1950 Census" by the National
Archives https://www.archives.gov/research/
census/1950/faqs

Digital